Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 16.pdf/44

 Sir Frederick Pollock. to the consideration of how far the science of jurisprudence can be furthered or em bellished by purely speculative cogitation. It is a large subject, and I shall attempt here to deal with it only in the briefest and most asual way. Philosophy is a system of thought, or, if you please, a search after the ultimate truth. The science of jurispru dence is the application of certain rules of human conduct to the facts of life, to the intercourse between man and man. That every branch of knowledge helps the realiza tion of every other branch, that every study trains the mind to more adequately grasp another subject, no one, I fancy, will deny. But that does not seem to be the point. The question is whether abstract thinking does not more or less handicap and incapacitate a man for concrete thinking. Judged by re sults the evidence seems to favor an affirma tive view. Bacon, perhaps, was an excep tion, and yet in its last analysis his philoso phy is so materialistic that it can hardly be called abstract. Excepting him, I venture to believe that no really great lawyer, or statesman, for that matter, has ever been in terested in abstract and abstruse philosophy. Indeed, there are today, two men who illus trate in a peculiarly distinguished manner what I mean. They have both reached the highest places in their vocations. The one is a lawmaker, the other a lawgiver. They both are philosophers first, and, on the ОПР hand a judge, on the other hand a states man, afterwards. Today no one who has watched their careers and is conversant with their achievements will care to deny that they have failed to acquit themselves as their talents and upbringing gave promise. This failure, I believe, is due primarily to their interest in philosophy. It unfits them for the practical affairs with which they must deal. Their equivocal good fortune in reaching the positions to which they have attained is due to the accidents of birth and to their ad

mittedly great intellectual powers, rather than to any tangible success in their chosen vocations. No man can read much philoso phy unless he is enamored of it. Philoso phy, like the law, is a jealous mistress. Xo man can serve both satisfactorily. And so, if Sir Frederick Pollock's legal work has not been of the highest order, the blame must be put down more to his philosophical studies than to anything else. For, undoubt edly, philosophy has a great attraction for him. His admirable Life and Philosophy of Spinoza is proof of that, if any proof outside of his legal writings themselves were needed. And, of course, to those who are interested in philosophy, it is a valuable contribution. Few men ever have had so rounded a life as Sir Frederick, a life touching and absorb ing so many points of contact with his fellow men in thought and deed. He is an ardent Hellenist, admiring the sublime literature of the Greeks. Today he is studying Persian in his leisure moments. Where he gets those moments it is difficult for an ordinary man to surmise. Surely it is no wonder that he has resigned his Oxford professorship. The reason that he gave therefor is characteris tic of him. He believed that twenty years was long enough for any one to dominate a course of study. But all these matters have not entirely consumed his time and his energy. For, in addition, he has taken an active interest in politics, and is the president of one of the London Liberal Unionist Committees, being driven from the Liberal party by Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule policy. Naturally the man, who has written on the science of politics and has given a course of Lowell Institute lectures upon the English publicists Hobbes and Hume, is a keen stu dent of politics and of the philosophy thereof. Indeed, he seems to be a living refutation of his own dictum, that "it may be said, and truly, that the range of any one man's work, even the best, is limited."